


do i care if i survive this? (bury the dead where they’re found)

by possibilist



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: ANYA MY CHILD THANK YOU FOR SAVING LEXA WHO IS AN ACTUAL GARBAGE CAN, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 22:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3666879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or: five times lexa almost dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do i care if i survive this? (bury the dead where they’re found)

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably going to turn into a two-shot because i want clarke's pov on some things relating to the same kinda feels.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: suicidal ideation? sort of? #lowkey

** do i care if i survive this? (bury the dead where they’re found) **

.  
_i wanna save you from your sorrow / how do i live with your ghost? / should i tear my arms out now? / i want to feel your touch / should i tear my eyes out now? everything i see returns to you somehow / should i tear my heart out now? / everything i feel returns to you somehow_  
—sufjan stevens, ‘the only thing’

//

1

When you are seven, you almost drown. You’re out playing with some other children from the orphanage by the river, only it is spring and the water is clear and cold and unpredictable, the currents fast and hidden. You were born by the ocean, breathed that sacred air into your small lungs for your first breath—you adore the water, you always have; the few scattered memories of your parents are of starfish and tide pools and your father fishing, your mother trying to control your hair while you laughed and squirmed beneath her gentle hands.

The river is not the same, but it does seep into your skin, into your blood—when you miss them, it almost makes it hurt a little less.

Today a boy named Cary challenges you to a swimming race. He is a few years older and very strong and a bully, so you agree immediately. It all goes well—he is big but clumsy, and you have always been an excellent swimmer—until you get caught in what you know is called a riptide. It is terrifying and harsh and the world goes very dark. Your lungs feel like they might burst and you claw with your hands at something to bring you back to the surface.

 _Drowning_ , you remember in English. There is no real word for it in Trigedasleng, but you have learned it in some language. For a brief moment you are scared, so scared, but then your limbs go numb and you make your peace.

But then you’re being ranked and your vision is spotted but Anya, who wasn't here when you jumped in, tosses you onto the shore and kneels down next to you, smacks you hard on the back and then turns you over on your side. You cough up a lot of water and then take some very ragged breaths that burn your lungs, and Anya pushes back your hair from where it’s spread in a wet mess across your forehead.

“I get in trouble if you die, Lexa,” she says in quick English, and you know she’s probably a little annoyed—Anya is always a little annoyed at you—but that you’re also her favorite.

You sits with you for a few minutes while you get your breathing evened out, and then she helps you to your feet. You’re the smallest kid in your class and everyone has left by this point, and it’s almost dinner time, and you feel very tired.

Anya sighs and then hoists you up onto her hip, and you wrap your arms around her neck and lean your head into her shoulder.

“Thank you,” you say.

She pats your back and carries you home gently, and you know she is glad you are alive.

//

2

Your hand is on fire.

It’s raining and your hand is on fire.

It takes you a few moments to realize that this is actually happening, and then you bend down and smother your hand along the mud. It hurts unlike anything you’ve felt anymore, and your stomach is bleeding and your vision is blurred.

You were ready to die.

You are ready to die.

But you keep walking because you are not dead yet: you are ten and you like birds and Costia and mathematics and when the trees bloom in spring; you don’t like English lessons or tomatoes or haircuts or training in the snow.

You are being tested to be Commander, and you are not dead yet.

It amazes you—it seems like it can’t be real—when you stumble into a clearing and see Anya, and then a  _lot_ of people, and you have not died. You are alive.

You sink to your knees and Costia’s mom, Sina, shoots forward with more healers. She hugs you tightly for a few moments and you start to cry, because you still don’t understand what is really happening, but you didn’t die.

She helps you lay back on the stretcher and then you hold your hand up, because it is still confusing you, the way it is black and charred and you can see bone. One of the other healers gasps and Sina glares at them.

“My brave girl,” she says, smooths back your hair, kisses your forehead. She has loved you for a long time, you think, because you love Costia.

You nod and she shouts orders to another healer quickly, and he puts his hands on your bleeding stomach. They start to lift your stretcher and things are getting blurry, but just before you go, Costia floats into your faded vision, and then her arms are around you as best she can with you lying down. You can’t really move, so you just kiss her neck. She’s crying.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you too,” you tell her, and your voice is rough and it hurts to talk. Sina pats Costia on the back and then she nods, straightens up to stand with Anya, who nods to you with a proud smile.

“Can I fall asleep?” you ask Sina.

She nods. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re safe.”

You wake up later, disoriented and uncertain, to someone cleaning your hand; it hurts and you scream and then there’s Sina, telling you it’ll be okay, smoothing your hair. You wake up again to someone pulling a needle and thread along the gash on your stomach and then to someone getting you to drink something and then to someone cutting skin from your thigh.

But eventually you sleep. If you dream, you remember none of them.

When you wake, Anya is sitting next to you, jaw clenched.

“I am the commander, then?” you ask.

“Heda,” she says, and being alive has never felt this tedious, this exhilarating, this uncertain, this sure.

/

3

Costia is dead and a terrifying destruction runs through your vessels. You want to fight and you want to kill and there are Ice Nation warriors in front of you and your sword burns in your scarred palm that Costia used to kiss like it was a precious thing.

It is not; it is deadly and it is a bomb waiting to go off and you will drive these people into ruins because that is what is left in your chest. You are sixteen and you have never craved death until now.

And then there is a moment, and you are staring down a huge warrior, three times your size. You know you can kill him; you are driven and you are learned and graceful and fast, but you think, for a split second, that dying yourself would be blessed.

You never kissed Costia goodbye.

You know it is not honorable and you know that you are the commander and you are supposed to be stronger and braver and much more ruthless than this, but it would be quick and painless and then your spirit would find some other miserable, beautiful child who loved the sea and wanted to have a small unity ceremony when they fell in love; to have a little house on the outskirts of Polis, to have two children and a dog.

You will never have any of that, you are sure, and your love has driven you here, to where your teeth ache and your scars are screaming for release. Your marrow takes a single breath and you decide to wait for the man’s sword to cut you in half; it would only be a physical mirror for the weakness of the crumbled bones inside of you.

But then he’s falling backward, away from you, and Anya rides by on her horse with a bow and arrow and scoops you up.

Neither of you say anything but she gets you off the battlefield—everything is winding down anyway; no one will question your absence as long as you are there to give a speech later about your victory.

Anya rides to the Commander’s tent set up on the other side of the hill and then drags you off her horse by your sash and shoves you into the tent. The guards leave when she glares, and you stand up as straight as you can and meet her eyes.

“Don’t you  _dare_ do that again,” she says.

“Do what?”

She steps into your space and you shrink back. “You wanted to die.”

She waits for you to argue, but you don’t. You have never really lied to Anya; you aren’t going to start now.

She takes a started and painful step back when you only glance down and her voice is full of sorrow when she says, “I cannot possibly understand what you are feeling, Lexa.”

You sit down on the ground quickly and put your face into your hands, press the heels of your palms into your eyes, which are pricking with tears. “It would hurt so much less,” you say, and your voice is a grasp at any strength you have left.

Anya sits down next to you and tugs you into her chest. You cry and she says nothing, just keeps her strong arms around you. She is safe; she will not look down on you because of this, nor will she ever mention it later.

“You cannot die, Lexa,” she says very softly after a while. “Costia would not want you to die for her.”

“I killed her.” You have never admitted it until now.

“You did not,” Anya says. “Bad people killed her. And you can punish them. You are Commander, Lexa. You can punish them in all the ways we know how.”

You fight battles and you demand peace and you are smart enough to win both; you are no longer a child and you no longer feel any bloom of life in you, but seeing the small children—safe and delighted when you wave to them—laughing near the river when you get back to Polis is enough for now.

//

4

You do not feel anything bloom inside of you until you meet Clarke, who has fallen from the sky and glimmers and glints and sparks. Anya knew her and didn’t kill her, which means she must be worth something to this world.

Clarke saves you from the gorilla—it would’ve been so easy to die, so quick and so freeing and proud, because you would have saved Clarke in this death, and she is so good she is easily worth the stone and tainted blood left of your life. But she has a gun and after your arm snapped in half she sets it.

She tells you. “You may be heartless, Lexa, but at least you’re smart.”

You smile because she used your name—she seems to lack the respect or formalities that your people have for you or your position; no one has referred to you by your name for years.

You tell Clarke about reincarnation and how death would be, in some ways you will never admit aloud ever again, welcome.

But Clarke is exasperated at this reckless, small impulse of yours; Clarke loves life, and it is terrifying and invigorating and fierce, and she is beautiful.

Clarke saves you both.

//

5

There is an archer pointing at Octavia and before you even think about it, you are stepping in front of her, and there is a sharp, jolting pain in your shoulder. You stumble back three steps and then your foot slips over the edge of a steep hill.

You are twenty-six, the oldest commander in your people’s history. You are united—and married, in Sky People culture, whatever that means—with Clarke, whom you love. She is beautiful and you have both healed; you are always earning her absolution since your betrayal of her at Mt. Weather, but it has been eight years and you have built a society of mixture and difference and education and peace together.

You are breathless in your tumble, because you are hitting rocks and trees and you do not want to die, but your body is breaking and you cannot stop it.

You try to grasp onto something, but then you hit your head and everything is dark and blurry and your limbs are sluggish. You know there are terraced cliffs below you, and you ache with the realization that you will never kiss Clarke again; you will never see your people again; you will never have children, or sleep in your small house, or argue with Clarke over what to name your dog.

You will die, and another child will be condemned to an exquisite hero’s fate.

But then Octavia is scrambling down the hill toward you—reckless, stupid, a terrible, self-sacrificing decision, because she cannot be spared in battle, but you are immeasurably thankful all the same. She plants her heels and yanks your arms, and you slip down further. A jolt a fear shoots through you and you fear that you may drag her down with you, but then—everything stops.

Octavia leans back for a few seconds and doesn’t let go of your hands. She lets out a loud laugh and says, “Clarke would’ve killed me if you’d died, you know that?”

You groan a snort of amusement in response, and Octavia sits up and carefully guides you both diagonally the rest of the way down the hill to a small trail that runs along the edge of a huge—deadly—cliff.

“Can you walk?” she asks you.

You are certain your leg is broken—you have fractured it once before, and you remember—and you shake your head.

“That’s okay,” she says and then drags you a little into some sheltered trees. You taste blood in your mouth and half of your face feels raw; your head aches and your shoulder pinches. Octavia looks at you critically and says, “Don’t move. I’ll be back soon with a horse.”

“Okay,” you say, because you are exhausted and in a lot of pain, and that is a logical plan of action.

She is not gone long, you don’t think, before she hops off a horse and hefts you up onto it before climbing on behind you.

“If you fall off and get more hurt I’ll end you myself, Commander. Don’t think I won’t.”

“I would not even dream of it, Octavia.”

She laughs and you manage to stay awake and somewhat upright on the horse until she makes it to camp. You have won the battle, Indra informs you, while healers are situating you on a stretcher. There were minor losses, and your borders are safe for now.

You nod, and she glances over your body with worry. You fall asleep on the short trek back to Polis, and you wake up hours later to Clarke glaring at you.

“I did not die,” you tell her.

“Bitch,” she says with a little sad laugh, her eyes watering.

You feel very floaty and you are sure Clarke has given you some of the medicine from the Sky People, because you are not in much pain. She tells you of your injuries but mostly you just want to hold her hand, so you reach out and she links her fingers with yours.

Your scarred palm feels peaceful, and you feel her pulse thrumming in her wrist when you trace her veins, and you are so very glad you are both alive.

**Author's Note:**

> come chill @possibilistfanfiction on tumblr if u want i guess


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